Badischer Kunstverein

Concerning Concrete Poetry

05 Feb - 03 Apr 2016

Hansjörg Mayer, "The last Alphabet" (detail), 1969/2013

“Concerning Concrete Poetry” presents the unique qualities of archives of concrete poetry as well as the national and international connections between them. The exhibition includes a comprehensive display of British concrete poets Bob Cobbing’s and Peter Mayer’s collections and takes its title and guiding principle from their recently reprinted seminal publication “Concerning Concrete Poetry”(1978/2014). This book contains a compilation of statements and chronologies of concrete, visual, and sound poetries and aims to define an analysis, history, and manifesto for the genre. In a similar manner, the exhibition describes the terms ‘concrete’, ‘semantic poetry’, and ‘concrete renewal’ within a contemporary environment that includes a series of events with artists, writers, and performers.

Examples of works by Henri Chopin, Dom Sylvester Houédard, and Emmett Williams from Mayer’s and Cobbing’s collections will be shown alongside selected artefacts and historical material. Importantly, the project also focuses on artists from outside of the UK with a specific accent on concrete poets from Germany, respectively on works by the ‘Stuttgart group/school’, including such prominent artists as Max Bense, Reinhard Döhl, and Helmut Heißenbüttel. These and other seminal works of concrete poetry originate from the collection of Reinhard Döhl, located at ZKM | Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. Furthermore the exhibition includes prints and portfolios by Hansjörg Mayer, whose early career also took place in Stuttgart before he moved to the UK in the 1960s, with his studio still situated in London. A substantial selection of work by Mayer and the numerous artists that he collaborated with through bookmaking in the late 1960s connect the two contextual and geographical lines of the project.

The exhibition “Concerning Concrete Poetry” also presents wider counter-cultural ephemera connected to the concrete poetry movement, such as posters, magazines, and limited edition artworks, and describes the intertwined current double-helix between design, typography, poetry, literature, and the visual arts, as well as the parallel histories of Conceptual Art, Mail Art, and Fluxus in their local and international forms. A comprehensive events programme invites performers and speakers whose activities are closely involved with research into the continued relevance of the medium for all aspects of visual culture. In addition, a vinyl record containing recent sound poetry designed by artist and graphic designer Scott King will be co-published by Badischer Kunstverein and Slimvolume Press. The record’s insert contains recent interviews with Hansjörg Mayer and Peter Mayer, while the former artist has also designed the poster for this exhibition.

“Concerning Concrete Poetry” was produced with the generous assistance of ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, Peter and Mary Mayer, and the Bob Cobbing family collection. Work from the latter collection has previously been shown in the Bob Jubilé programme, curated by William Cobbing and Rosie Cooper.